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PText bridges the gap between Processing's PFont and PShape classes, providing some much needed functionality when working with text in Processing.

PText extendsPShape, meaning that is stores text in a vector format. With this, it offers methods to:

• Easily manipulate text dimensions
• Get a text's exact bounds (dimensions)
• Accurately get text's ascent and descent (unlike Processing's existing methods — seeappendix)
• Manipulate text characteristics (such as shear and per-character rotation)
• Visualise per-character bounds, whitespace, and vertices

The PText API is catalogued below.

• setText(text)
• setFont(fontNameString, fontSize)
• setFont(PFont)

• scale(both)
• scale(x, y)
• setScale(both)
• setScale(x, y)

• setTextWidth(n)

• scaleWidth(n)
• getTextWidth()

• setTextHeight(n)

• scaleHeight(n)
• getTextHeight()

• getTextAscent()
• getTextDescent()
• getFontAscent()
• getFontDescent()
• getWhiteSpaceLeft()
• getWhiteSpaceRight()
• getCharWidth(character)
• getCharHeight(character)
• getCharWhitespace(character)

• setCharacterSpacing(n)

• setCharacterRotation(charIndex, angle)

  TODO image

• setShearX(maxShear)

  TODO image

• shape(myPText, x, y)

  Use Processing'sshape() method to draw the PText like aPShape (alignment will beLEFT,BASELINE).

• draw(x, y, alignX, alignY)

  Or calldraw() on the PText object to specify a specific X and Y alignment (similar totextAlign()).

• debug()

Resizing a PText shape using setTextWidth() and setTextHeight(), using debug() to show

import pText.PText;PText text;void setup() {    size(1280, 720);  smooth(4);  text = new PText(this, "Bauhaus 93", 192);    text.setText("hello");    text.setFill(color(55, 255, 90));  text.setStrokeWeight(1);  text.setScale(1, 1);  //shapeMode(CENTER);  text.setTextWidth(width);  text.setTextHeight(height);      noFill(); // you must call global noFill() after any setText(), otherwise text can't be filled}void draw() {  background(255);  shape(text, mouseX, mouseY);  //text.debug(mouseX, mouseY);}

Using the inbuilt functionstextWidth(),textAscent(), andtextDescent() are an easy way to get agood approximate result for the height and width of a string (of a given font), but they are notexact.

Why?

• textAscent() returns text height above the baselinebased on the letter 'd'
• textDescent() returns text height below the baselinebased on the letter 'p'.
• textWidth() includes glyph whitespace (aka padding; ideally we want to ignore this for the first and last characters)

textAscent() + textDescent() therefore measures themaximum height of a string in a given font and font size, and not the height of a specific string. In other words, if your text doesn't include both 'd' and 'p' characters, then using these methods to determine text height will overestimate the result.

• Scale whitespace (to increase/decrease spacing between letters, independent of font size)
• Display dimension labels (such as ascent & descent) in debug mode
• String ascent: return the max ascent of the string'scurrent characters
• String descent: return the max descent of the string'scurrent characters
• Allow multiple fonts within one PText at once?
• Support multiple lines / blocks of text